


if i tremble at the sight of you

by sludgeraptor



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, absolutely the worst., can you believe thats not a tag?, exorcised Hannah, sliiiight body horror maybe with description of handigo's face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 22:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6396250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sludgeraptor/pseuds/sludgeraptor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah comes back, but she's different. Sam still likes her, though.</p><p>(AU where Hannah gets rescued and exorcised, Josh is overexcitable, and Sam is really, really gay. beth's still dead though)</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i tremble at the sight of you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still a little wonky on the ending here but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ take the sad lesbians  
> (trans chris is mentioned. he doesnt actually show up but still)

46 days since the twins disappeared.

You liked to consider yourself a fairly hopeful person, really. You’re not one to crumble when the odds aren’t in your favour. Your parents raised you not to give up in the face of adversity, and you’ve been doing your best to keep up that attitude even with Hannah gone. Hannah was your sunshine. And wow, now that you think that, no matter how true it is, you realise just how bad you have it.

11:59PM ticks over to midnight. 

47 days since Han disappeared.

You should stop counting the days. You know that. But you’re stupid. You’re stupid, and you miss her, and you’re sure one day - any  _ minute _ now - the phone is going to ring and someone is going to tell you Beth and Hannah are fine, and you can drive over to the Washington place and pick Hannah up and twirl her around and tell her the truth about how you feel,  _ all _ of it, all the repressed feelings you’d kept inside for her sake. Any goddamn minute now.

You stare at the clock until quarter past.

Your phone stays silent.

By one, you’re in an uneasy sleep.

***

It’s 6am when your phone rings, and  _ God _ , are you tired. (You keep telling yourself you’re going to stop counting minutes to midnight, but it’s always a lie.)

You don’t even check who it is before picking up. Your mother always calls you around now to make sure even if you’re mourning you don’t “let the day get away from you” or whatever. Which, naturally, is why you open the conversation with “Mom, I’m up. I’m good. I’m not out of the schedule, I promise, it’s been over a month since I got back-”  
“I don’t appreciate your tone, young lady!” A voice that definitely isn’t your mother replies, sounding more satisfied than it had in quite a while.

“Ah. Good morning, Josh.” You say, rolling out of bed and sighing. “What’s up?”

“Come to my house. ASAP. No fuckin’ around, okay? I mean it.”

“That - I mean, that’s intriguing. But it’s not an answer to the question.”  
“Be here soon,” Josh croons, right before hanging up.

You don’t know whether you should be worried or excited.

The drive from your college to the Washington house isn’t very long, and you know it like the back of your hand from driving to visit all the time, so you let your mind wander while you make the commute. The first thing on your mind is why Josh seemed to be in such a good mood - he’d been reclusive at best since Hannah and Beth disappeared, so the sheer  _ normalcy _ of how he greeted you was - well, not normal. Could it be that the twins…? 

You don’t want to get your hopes up. You know, realistically, it could be anything. This was Josh, for Christ’s sake. Once he’d thrown a party because Chris had gotten his first period, and he’d seemed completely genuine about the matter, too. For all you knew he could be so happy because he’d been excused from taking out the trash or something.

When you pull into the driveway, your heart is hammering. You don’t know what you want. What if it really is just some random thing Josh got too excited about showing you? What if the twins are still gone? What if Josh is pulling your leg because you didn’t stop the prank in time?

Feeling nauseous, you knock on the door. Josh flings it open, nearly smacking himself in the face, and then beams at you. He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot with what’s either anxiety or excitement, or both, and he practically drags you inside once he realises it really is you. He keeps his grip on your arm as he pulls you up the stairs, to where the bedrooms are, without once shutting his mouth.

“- never  _ believe _ it, I couldn’t either, they kept it from me to make sure I didn’t put too much stock in it or something, I don’t know, but it’s  _ happening _ Sam it’s -”

“What’s happening?” You cut him off, frowning. 

He stops in front of Hannah’s room, grip easing up just a little. Turning back around to you, he shifts his grip so he’s holding your hand.

“I talked to her. No matter what she looks like, this is the same old Hannah.”

“I don’t understand,” You murmur. “What happened?”

“You should ask her,” he replies, squeezing on your hand and turning back to face Han’s door. He raps on it three times, even knocks, and there’s a brief pause before the door cracks open. Josh is in front of you so you can’t see Hannah (if it is Hannah - Josh’s cryptic hinting has you feeling like you might throw up again) and the conversation is too hushed for you to make out what exactly they’re saying. When Josh finally steps back and the door opens, you feel the air rush from your lungs.

She’s there. She’s real.

Your whole body is trembling as you stumble forward, but you stop yourself a few steps in front of her, hands half-forward and brain fried, and you take her in.

She’s the same. She’s the same, except her skin is paler and one eye is milky and almost swollen, so it nearly touches the lenses of her glasses. She wears a plain mask, like the ones they hand out during flu season, the only sign that it’s hers being the little doodle of a horse with devil horns and big fangs signed “<3 JOSH” in the corner. Her hair is a little unkempt, and she sags, like she’s in a permanent state of just having been punched in the gut. Even so, she looks to be taller now; even slouching like she is, she’s your height.

“Holy shit,” You breathe, putting your hands forward again to touch her, but then drawing them back just as quickly. “You’re -”  
“It’s weird, I know,” She mumbles, turning away from you. “I look - freaky. A-and seeing is harder now. This eye -it’s gross,  it’s all huge and - and white, and…”

“Hannah,” You repeat, and this time you do it. You put your hands on her face, gentle, guide her to look back at you. “I missed you  _ so _ much.”

Her eyes crinkle up at the corners, and you pull her into a hug, squeezing as tight as possible and telling yourself this is real. 

She’s real. She’s here, and she’s with you.

***

It takes Hannah a week or so to tell you that Beth is dead. You can’t say you’re surprised, but it still hurts, and it explains why Josh vacillates wildly between his usual smug, joking demeanor and the same kind of recluse he’d become when neither of the twins were around. You take an unofficial break from school to spend more time with the Washingtons, because your grades had been struggling ever since the visit to Blackwood anyway, and your parents had to understand that Hannah and Josh - especially Hannah - needed you right now.

She doesn’t like to look at herself. You and Josh had taken it upon yourselves as your duty to rid the house of reflective surfaces. Every mirror had been covered with blankets, every glass dirtied, every pool of reflective liquid flushed. This hadn’t been taken too kindly by Bob and Melinda Washington, but after Josh argued with them over it for at least an hour, they let it go. You turned on a movie with Han when that happened, to try and distract her. The two of you curled up in the Washington’s full-fledged in-home theatre, with the volume up loud and you leaning your head on her shoulder. It was a romcom -  _ Love Actually _ or  _ Bridget Jones’ Diary _ or something - and the whole time you wondered if she would hate you if you took her hand.

That feeling, at least, is old and familiar.

She cries over Beth at least once a day. You usually do too. Her fingers dig into your shoulders as she sobs and heaves and you can’t help but notice how only her human eye cries (or is the white one also a human eye? That she hasn’t told you - she chokes up every time you ask). You focus on it so you don’t imagine the sound of Beth’s back cracking on the rocks, or Han crying out in pain trying to limp through the snow.

She lets you play with her hair and fingers and hold her for warmth and you can stay as long as you want as long as you’re not there when she eats. She hasn’t explained that either, but with the way she tears up when she asks you to go, you’re not exactly going to press.

You try to ask Josh what’s going on, once, to see if he’ll elaborate on what he told you when he first told you she was back, but his lips are sealed.

“Sorry, Sammy,” he says, his lazy smile contrasting with the flat seriousness of his words, “but I’m on Sister’s Orders not to say shit about that.”

As frustrating as it is to be kept in the dark, you’re still glad she’s here. You’d fallen into a weird schedule, and you wouldn’t trade it for anything anymore.

***

You don’t find out about Hannah in the way you expected.

It all began with you waking up at 3am. You’re sleeping in the Washington guest room, which doesn’t have a bathroom, so you have to share Hannah’s. Usually that isn’t an issue - though a few times she’s woken up and followed your movement across the room with her head cocked at a strange, almost unnatural angle - but tonight the lights in the bathroom are on.

Double checking that the bed is empty and that Hannah didn’t just leave the lights on for comfort, you step forward into the light from the cracked door. You put your hand on the door handle, hesitate, and then pull it open.

The first thing you notice is the shattered mirror. The blanket you and Josh had placed over it is folded neatly on the bathroom counter. Your eyes wander downwards from there, following the trail of broken glass to Hannah, curled up beside the toilet and clutching a large mirror shard. She whimpers when she notices you, clutches the mirror tighter. You feel a lump in your throat wondering what she was doing with it.

“Sam,” she croaks, and it’s only then you look to her face.

She doesn’t have her mask on. Her entire left cheek is gruesome, bloody gums and needle teeth creating a clash of deep red and stark white, almost in a horrific parody of a smile. Her milky white eye is trained on you, and you feel cold to your core.

“I know. I know, I’m - I’m disgusting,” she mutters, looking down at her hands. “I’m so - I can’t do anything about it, Sam, I’ve tried -”

“Hannah -”  
“I tried to cut out the teeth, but they took away anything sharp - I tried to claw out my eye, but they cut my nails -”

“ _Hannah_ -”  
“This was the only option I had left, you know? This is the only way,” she says, tightening her grip on the shard. “I can’t do this, Sam. I’m a monster! I mean, look at how you looked at me - God, can you imagine what Mike would say if he saw this, he didn’t care about me when I was just - just some plain Jane, but _now_ -”  
“Hannah, _no_ ,” You say, leaning to reach the blanket and unfold it, spreading it over the shards of glass so you can walk over to her. “You’re not a monster.”

“I can only eat meat, Sam! I - I get hungry when people bleed, and I can’t see as well unless people are moving, and sometimes I lose myself and I skitter across walls and hurt Josh and -”  
“You are the Hannah I’ve always known,” You insist, kneeling next to her. “You’re never going to be a monster.”

She swallows hard and tugs at her hair nervously, looking almost like she might pull it out. “I am, Sam. They had to - I  _ ate  _ someone, I let Beth die, I -”

“Hannah,” You repeat softly, holding your arms out to her. She looks hesitant for a few seconds before dropping the glass and wrapping her arms around you. 

“You’re not a monster. You will never be a monster. You’re Hannah Washington, 18 years old, voted most likely to be next  _ American Idol _ , animal lover, total badass for surviving on what I’m now thinking is the deadliest mountain ever, still the most beautiful girl I know, and...my best friend.”

Hannah hiccups a sob, and you curl your fingers up in her shirt, breathing in deeply.

“Can I - tell you something?” You ask, keeping your breath steady and trying not to shake.

“What is it?”

“Hannah, I - I really -” You swallow hard, run your fingers through her hair. “I’m in love with you. Really, really in love with you. And you being this - whatever this is - that doesn’t change anything. Because you’re still Hannah.” You pull back so you can look her in the eyes, tuck her hair behind her ear, and hope to God you’re not making this more awkward than it already was. “And it’s fine if you’re not interested, or if you just wanna be friends, I get that, but I just want you to know, you changing is never going to change how I fee-”

She cuts you off by pressing her mouth to yours, and the feeling of her teeth tickling your lips and even pressing into them is almost painful, but you’ve still never been happier in your life.

“Might have to work on the teeth.” You joke as she pulls back, wiping her own tears away.

“I’m sorry! I’m such a klutz, I just got so excited that you said that, I thought no one would ever say anything like that to me, especially now! A-and -” Her voice drops to an embarrassed whisper, and pink coats her cheeks. “And I’m glad it was you, Sam.”

“You know me. Always the master of opportune timing,” You say, gesturing vaguely at the mess in the bathroom. She giggles.

You feel like, maybe, things are going to be okay.


End file.
